1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to magnetic heads and, in particular, to a magnetic head structure which is designed to become operative in response to a magnetic signal which it, itself, carries.
2. Description Relative to the Prior Art
A conventional single-track magnetic head comprises a coil-carrying ring-shaped gapped core of magnetic material having low coercivity, high permeability, and low remanence, the gap being a high reluctance discontinuity formed within the core. During recording, signal flux induced in the core bridges the gap and, in so doing, extends outwardly from the gap, thereby to effect recording in a magnetic medium in contact with the core at its gap. When a plurality of singletrack cores are stacked to form a multitrack record head, each core carrying a respective coil, care must be taken to insulate magnetically the cores from each other. Absent such magnetic insulation, and because core material has a high permeability, it is relatively easy for the magnetic signal in one core to couple inductively into an adjacent core, thereby to cause an unwanted crosstalk signal to be recorded in the track corresponding to the adjacent core. That is, despite the fact that no signal is applied to the coil of the adjacent core, flux induced in the adjacent core can bridge its gap and undesirably record "ghost" information in the medium. Shielding and/or spacing the cores far enough apart to preclude unwanted inductive coupling are common techniques which are employed to avoid this problem, but both techniques suffer from the standpoint of undesirably decreasing head track density.